NOTE AND COMMENT 



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Wanted. — Short notes of interest to the general botanist 

 are ahvays in demand for this department. Our readers are 

 mvited to make this the place of publication for their shorter 

 botanical items. The magazine is issued as soon as possible 

 after the 15th of February, May, August and November. 



Density of the Tropical Forest. — Tn temperate reg- 

 ions forty or fifty different species of trees is considered a goo'd 

 showing for the woodlands of a county or even larger area, 

 while the trees themselves grew so scattered that plenty of light 

 can sift down to the forest floor. In the tropics there is a de- 

 cided difference. A writer in the Philippine Journal of 

 Science states that in a piece of forest a little more than two 

 acres in extent there was found, by actual count, eleven 

 hundred and sixty trees representing eighty-five different spe- 

 cies. These trees were all over twelve feet high and no account 

 is taken of other vegetation. In such a forest, one must keep 

 for the most part to the beaten path and cannot wander at will 

 in search of botanical specimens. 



Spores of Fungi. — The spores of fungi, as with spores 

 in genera, are very minute. This is doubtless a design to fa- 

 cilitate their dispersal since they are cast upon the wind and 

 may float about for a long time before coming to rest. It is 

 commonly known that they are very numerous, but just how 

 numerous, few have any idea. A recent work on the fungi 

 gives some most astonishing figures on this head. The com- 

 mon field mushroom produces two thousand million spores, 



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